Dreamwalkers (6 page)

Except when it was bad. Mom told me about how
Aunt Jenny and Uncle Frank’s relationship was troubled because
Uncle Frank was so dominant. His anger bled through the bond, and
made her angry and unhappy. She could sometimes calm him down, but
more often than not it didn’t work that way.

Remy’s face glows orange in the firelight,
sharp shadows accenting his chiseled jawline.

My hands dig into my legs. It’s so unfair,
that I should have been mate-bonded to Daniel. It’s like Mom didn’t
even consider that I might find another werewolf mate. I know my
parents and Daniel’s parents were afraid that we were the only two
left, and they had always planned for us to be mated. It had
something to do with his grandmother’s death, I know that, too.

They said Anna Loupe could see things. Things
like Daniel being the one who would save us all. I don’t know what
Anna might have said about Daniel and me, but I can’t imagine why
my mother would bond me to Daniel after what he did.

She knew he was crazy. Also, he’s my first
cousin. Incest had been a problem for our pack going back
generations. To the Loupes, in fact: Remy’s direct ancestors. His
great-great-grandfather had gone crazy and killed nearly his entire
family. Anna was thought to be the only survivor until Remy showed
up, proving that some of the children who had escaped and never
been heard from had survived, and prospered.

So why would she have done this? Why not
wait?

I can’t help thinking that Daniel is weak,
even though I care about him.

Even though he is my mate.

“I’m going to bed,” I tell everyone.

Maybe a little dreamwalking will help me
figure this out.

Inside a barn, in the middle of the woods. I
hear the night sounds of animals, smell pig and cow, goats and
sheep. Grain and hay, gunpowder, manure. Closing my eyes, I use my
new lessons to sense where Daniel is. He’s here, but not in the
aisle.

There.

He’s sleeping. Daniel’s dreams are always his
real life nightmare. So he’s sleeping, in a barn. I remember that
barn in Nebraska he must have slept in, before killing an elderly
couple in their bed. I had to burn that house down. So he’s back to
his old ways?

Gliding down the center aisle of the barn,
getting whiffs of leather, blood, shit–moving silently is so much
easier in a dream–I keep that connection to Daniel’s sleeping mind,
until I am overcome with the scent of shit. And blood.

The iron bars of the stall door cast shadows
over his sleeping face. He sleeps sitting up, his back against the
wooden planks of the wall, his hands open and empty at his sides.
The door isn’t locked, exactly. There’s a sliding bolt that he
could easily open through the bars, but it’s in the locked
position. Is he some kind of prisoner? I look in at him. In sleep
he appears vulnerable. His clothes are unwashed and the left side
of his torso is covered in dried blood. His leg is wrapped. There
are bandages and scissors and thread in the hay and sawdust.

“What happened to you?” I ask.

I am in the stall with him without having
thought about it. He is still sleeping. I move toward him, slide
effortlessly.

He is weak, I tell myself.

The bandages, the needle and thread–he
stitched himself up, whatever happened to him. He might be weak,
but he is a survivor. I can’t imagine the strength it would take to
be able to sew myself together.

I lay down, my head in his lap, and place his
arms on me.

The contact wakes him up, and he looks down
at me.

This is when I realize I am naked.

I wake up in my sleeping bag, my back sore
from sleeping on the floor. Exhaling, I wonder why I couldn’t stay
in that dream. Maybe I can go back.

I try, but it isn’t until nearly dawn that
sleep returns to me.

This time it’s a house, not a barn, but I
sense that the barn is close. The house looks like a rustic log
cabin with its sparse décor, but a fight took place here recently.
Furniture overturned, claw marks on the hardwood floors, rugs
askew. I can smell Daniel everywhere, his scent on the rugs and in
the blood splatter on the wall, but not his presence. I can smell
other wolves too, unfamiliar wolves. And yet none of them are
here.

Someone is here, though.

A wolf someone.

The unfamiliar house, the hallway full of
dark doorways, I feel like the Final Girl in a horror movie waiting
to happen. The scent of death hangs heavy in the air. I always want
to yell at those girls in the movies. “Turn on the lights, stupid!”
or “Don’t go in there!” It’s a dream, though. Horror movie rules
don’t apply. I can’t turn on the lights. And unless I feel like
standing here until Daniel decides to show up, I need to go in that
room. At least I’m not naked like I was in the last dream. I’m
wearing my own clothes, the pajama pants and hoodie I wore to
bed.

I approach the dark doorway where I can feel
someone’s presence. I move as silently as I can, slowly, lightly,
ready to run and taking in all the details I can.

Whoever is in the room hasn’t noticed me yet.
They are eating something, I can tell by the snuffling, grunting
sounds, the tearing flesh and crunching of bone. The smell of meat,
but it isn’t just meat, because I’ve eaten a fresh kill. This dead
meat isn’t the usual. It reeks of Death.

As is wont to happen in dreams, time slows
down. I cannot be sure if this is my decision or that of the
dreamer–which in this case I don’t think is Daniel.

Whose head am I in?

The hallway lengthens, the doorway stretching
farther away. Everything grows darker. A rumbling–is that thunder?
The growling, slurping sounds are so loud now that I want to press
my hands against my ears.

I need to get control of this situation. This
is someone’s nightmare, and I don’t know how true to life it
is.

This is all just a dream.

This is all just a dream.

A crackle of lightning and boom of thunder
prove that my mantra hasn’t started working yet. So I do what my
instincts tell me to do: squeeze my eyes shut and cover my ears,
and speak the words out loud.

“This is all just a dream.”

My other senses tell me that the oppressive
air has lessened. My skin feels the creeping sunlight of dawn. That
other presence is in the room, waiting, head cocked and
listening.

I inhale, allow myself sight and hearing, and
enter the room.

If this was a horror movie, right now would
be the point where I’d be screaming, “Run!” at the character on the
screen standing stock still in shock at the horrors before her. She
stands there with her mouth open, on the verge of screaming,
drinking in the horror. “Run, bitch, run!”

That’s me, standing here with my mouth open,
eyes locked on this creature crouched on the floor of a boy’s
bedroom–narrow twin bed, blue curtains, some books. The creature
from the neck down looks almost human. It has on blue striped
pajama pants and a pajama shirt that would button up if any of the
buttons were still attached. The shoulder is ripped, a curved gash
through to the skin, and soaked through with blood. The
hands–because I can’t bring myself to look at his face yet–the
hands end in swollen fingers with too many joints and fingernails
thick and sharp.

Up around the neck area is where the hair
starts. I have no idea what this boy looked like before, because
right now his face is grotesquely stretched, his nose long and his
mouth wide with teeth jutting out. Ears long and hairy. Blood and
drool dripping from its mouth and hands.

This horror movie I’m in, it’s one of those
wolfman movies.

I’ve never seen my mom or my aunt in this
half-stage of transformation. Not even Daniel, when he was learning
how to control the change, looked like this, like a monster.

At the creature’s feet is a body.

Since the creature is merely observing my
presence, I allow myself to peek down at the corpse. Relief–it
isn’t Daniel. It’s an older man, burly with a rough beard. I’m not
sure what exactly killed him, but given that his torso has been
hollowed out like a watermelon I’d place my bets that this kid
wasn’t just passing by to snack on a corpse.

Maybe… maybe this kid killed Daniel?

No.

I would have felt it through the bond. Daniel
is alive somewhere. Daniel would have sliced this half-breed to
ribbons. Daniel might not have what it takes to be a leader, but
when his wolf took over he was a dervish of teeth and claws.

“Where’s Daniel?” I ask of the boy-wolf.

His eyes are so sad. He points at the window
by the bed. It’s open wide enough for a wolf to leap through.

I back out of the doorway and go down the
hall to the front door, also open. Leaving that room, I realize
suddenly that the dead man was the creature’s father.

Killed his father just like Daniel did.

Outside the front door I am confronted with
unformed forest, a wall of green and brown.

The creature’s dream world ends here.

Needless to say, I’m frustrated and still
tired when morning rolls around. And naturally my mother is
refreshed and chipper and ready to rub it in my face.

“Good morning!” she sings as she comes into
the room after a shower.

I groan and roll over. The floor could be
made out of granite for how my body feels right now.

Mom hums while she dons her make up and
towel-dries her hair. I know this song… Oh. My. God. My mother is
humming Lady Gaga. I think I just threw up in my mouth a
little.

Even with the pillow wrapped around my head,
I can still hear Remy outside chopping wood. Already? How long has
he been awake? Then I remember how my mom had been flirting with
him yesterday. I get this image of Remy chopping wood with his
shirt off and that’s it.

“Can’t you see I’m sleeping?” I snap, which
cuts off the Lady Gaga mid-chorus.

“Obviously you’re not,” she replies.

“I could be if you’d even attempt to be
quiet.”

“Are you on the rag or something?”

“God, Mom!”

I slither out of my sleeping bag and stomp
off into the kitchen. I barely need to look out the window to see
that Remy is indeed shirtless. No wonder Mom is so chipper.

Cooking isn’t exactly my forte, but I can
make coffee… I think. We always had a coffee machine at home. The
non-electric coffee pot doesn’t have directions on it. I pull off
the lid and peer inside, pull out some metal parts. Where do the
coffee grinds go?

“The filter goes at the bottom of this
part.”

Remy’s hand appears over my shoulder.

I jump. “Jeez! When will you stop doing
that?”

He smiles at me. “I think your mom put the
filters in that blue bin over there.”

“Seriously, you’re going to give me a heart
attack.”

“I guess you need your coffee before you
start training?”

“Oh, are we going to do another training
session?”

“You can train all day, every day, if you
want.”

I look at him doubtfully. “I suppose there’s
nothing else to do out here.”

“Once we get this place up and running, there
will be plenty to do. We need to plan strategy.”

“Strategy for what? They’ve got us on the
run. We’re on the defensive now. All we can do is fortify this
place.”

Remy hops and lands sitting on the
counter.

“Look, Kayla, I know your mom wants to keep
you in the dark. I didn’t know anything about you when I first
started helping your mom and Jen. I mean,” he looks down at his
hands, “all I knew was that you were a fifteen-year-old girl. I
assumed you wouldn’t exactly be a big help. Actually, I assumed
you’d be a huge liability.”

“Liability?”

“If any of those other packs got a hold of
you… They could hold you for ransom, make your mom grovel to get
you back. They could decide to keep you, to use you as a
breeder–that would kill your mom even more. I figured if we had to
fight, or even run, you’d be the weak link.”

I’m not quite sure how this guy can get me to
feel swoony about him one minute, then make me want to punch him
the next, but my fists are balled up and ready for action.

He notices and holds up his hands. “Look, now
that I’ve met you, I know I was wrong to think that way. You’re
plenty strong, and smart. Your pack is small so you might not even
know that there are dominant females, but you and your mom are two
of the strongest werewolves I’ve ever met.”

“That’s not saying much. You’re a lone
wolf.”

Something in his eyes darkens, like a curtain
being drawn over a window. He mentioned pack magic. So where’s his
pack? Why aren’t they helping us too?

“What, you don’t want my compliments?”

Avoiding my comment about being a lone wolf.
I lean back against the counter and appraise him. “So you think
we’re strong enough to be on the offensive, that’s what you’re
saying?”

“Definitely. You can fight back. You can show
them that you refuse to join them.”

He makes it sound so easy. Three women up
against two other packs, though–those aren’t great odds.

“Have they told you about what happened
after… after Daniel left?”

“I heard about it.”

“From who?”

He shrugs. “Word gets around.”

I hesitate before continuing. I don’t want to
believe that Remy could be a double crosser, a member of those of
those enemy packs. He isn’t exactly giving me any assurances that
he is here completely on his own.

“The scouts started nosing around before we
even had the funerals,” I say. “One of them came right to our front
door, delivered flowers. It had only been two days. I was the one
who answered the door. I hadn’t turned yet, so I couldn’t smell
that he was a wolf or anything. I didn’t even really know Daniel,
or my dad, or anyone else was a wolf either. All I knew was that
Dad and Uncle Frank and Daniel and Uncle Red had gone on a hunting
trip for Daniel’s birthday, and no one had come back. Then she told
me they were all dead and Daniel was missing. I was a mess.”